Author: Steven Alvarez

The photo above exemplifies how bilinguals communicate with hybrid sense-making strategies. I collected the image during my fieldwork at an after-school program in Kentucky–data from a larger ethnographic project exploring literacy practices in Latino barrios in New York City and Kentucky. As one can gather from the afternoon’s activities, the celebration of books was a social event for families, and one celebrated bilingually. Over 100 families from the community were in attendance, which was not an unusual number for this particular after-school program. Most of the adults in attendance were monolingual Spanish or English speakers. The majority of elementary and high school students, however, were bilingual, and the program conducted…